


Splinters

by sewnbythecolourofgreen



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Pre-Series, newsroom fanfic challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 03:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10527552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sewnbythecolourofgreen/pseuds/sewnbythecolourofgreen
Summary: "I think." MacKenzie said slowly. "That when I can, I should go home."Extended metaphor/fairytale retelling feat. overwrought colour symbolism.She couldn’t be Gerda, not if she was the one who had put the ice in his heart in the first place.





	

**Author's Note:**

> ... A few days late, but life happens. 
> 
> This is for lilacmermaid's March challenge and it's based on the Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen", which I don't expect many of you to have read, so I have (I hope!) made the fairytale clear-ish but very briefly: Boy meets girl, boy gets an enchanted piece of ice stuck in his heart that makes him cruel, boy leaves home, girl goes on journey to save boy. 
> 
> ps. If you're like me and _hate_ keeping track of nonlinear time structures, I'll save you a lot of pain: with the exception of the final scene and the scenes in which Mac is actually telling the story (Delaram, January 2010), everything is in chronological order.

**New York, 1984**

The book was her sister's really, but MacKenzie knew even then that things are always more beautiful when you cannot have them. It had a blue cover embossed with silver and gold and an inscription penned in loopy cursive, happy birthday from a distant aunt. She knew the story before she could read herself, resting on her father's knee he would turn to a page and by the illustration alone she would know the words off by heart. When she was tucked into bed, either by her parents or the nanny, she knew the volume would be carefully put back in its place on the bookcase, returned to her sister's side of the room. 

 _When the story is done,_  she would read to her father, for MacKenzie McHale had never been one for sitting and listening,  _you will know a great deal more than you do now._

 

**Delaram, January, 2010**

Jim Harper's gunshot wound had been an anticlimax, all things considered. No exit wound, no pelvic fracture, no penetration of the abdominal cavity. All it took was a little lidocaine, a surgeon digging out the bullet, and an order to get some sleep. He'd have to stay at the FOB a few days, but had been assured no permanent damage save a scar on his ass. 

Mac had taken this all as best she could, trying to listen to the army doctor's voice and quell the constant, pounding wave of guilt (I brought him here, I brought him here, I brought him here _)_  eroding the edges of her psyche. 

None of this was going to help Jim, she decided. (Repress and move on, that was the McHale way. Or, at least, the MacKenzie McHale way.)

"Just try to get him to sleep." The surgeon told her.

Sleep. Get Jim to sleep. She could do that.

(Two more months. She could do that.)

By the time he'd collapsed into a bunk her faculties had returned to her somewhat, her brain had moved to  _he's alive, he's alive, he's alive_  to shutting off the broken record player altogether. She perched on the edge of his mattress, smoothed back his hair when it tumbled into his eyes. 

"I'm going to sit here while you sleep, okay?"

"I'm not tired." He protested. "Pass me my laptop; I can work for a bit."

"Too bad sucker, you follow my orders. Or have you forgotten who signs your paychecks?"

He smiled weakly. "I don't have many of those left."

She returned his smile. "You're right. You're going home soon."

" _We're_ going home soon." He corrected. 

"Are you going to miss it here?" She teased.

"Maybe. Are you?"

"Maybe." She conceded. 

"Your fault." He mumbled. "That we're leaving. If we hadn't been in Kandahar when-" 

"Shut it." She said, smiling again. "Get some sleep. That's an order from your superior."

Jim shifted a little on the bed. "Can you-" He hesitated. "Can you talk? While I try to sleep, can you talk?"

She frowned. "About what?" 

"Anything, I don't care. It quieter here than the camps. I'm not used to it."

She fixed his hair again (for whose benefit, she was unsure) and when he closed his eyes, she began, a little awkwardly. Anything on the news was out as a topic, anything that would make him feel he had to go be a producer. She settled for recounting a few drunken exploits from her university days, which devolved into a lengthy explanation of certain clauses in the Cambridge Union's constitution. She talked about her sisters, and listed for him every school she'd ever attended (she tried for every city as well, but kept losing count). And, when she was certain he was no longer listening, talked a little about Will. After a while of Jim not moving at all, she stopped. 

"Keep going." He murmured, almost asleep. 

She was rapidly running out of things to say. 

"Mac," He said. "Please?"

So she kept going, or started again, this time finding in the recesses of her consciousness words she didn't know she still remembered. 

_In a big city so crowded with houses and people that few found room for even a small garden and most people had to be content with a flowerpot, a little boy and a little girl who loved each other very much managed to have a garden that was a little bigger than a flowerpot._

Jim was far too old for bedtime stories, she knew, but another six inches and the bullet would have hit his spine, so maybe a fairytale wasn't the worst thing in the world. 

 

**Washington, D.C., July 2005**

Will brought roses on their first date. 

 _"What glorious summer days those were,_   _" Mac told Jim. "and how beautiful it was out under those fragrant rose bushes which seemed as if they would never stop blooming."_

It was his apartment, not a restaurant or the theatre- Will wasn't famous, especially not compared to the Washington brass, but it seemed ostentatious to take her somewhere he might be recognized (It had never been a problem when he was dating anyone else, but around her ostentatious was the very last thing he wanted to be).

He was trying very hard not to fall in love with her, and in that respect, the date was a failure.

 

**Washington, D.C., February 2007**

They broke up on a Saturday. It was raining.

 _They broke up_ was a rationalization, she knew, a desperate attempt to cling to considering them a whole. He broke up with her, and it was a testament to her naivete, she would later decide, that she didn’t see it coming.

It had radiated through their apartment, beginning with them lying in bed, then her sitting up and him pacing, then him making coffee as an excuse not to look at her, until she knew she’d never be able to look at his apartment again without imagining this conversation.

Given, however, that it ended with him on the couch and her in a cab, it didn’t seem like that would be much of a problem.

When he didn’t answer his phone the next morning, she called Atlanta.

_“Poor Kay! A fragment of the goblin’s mirror had pierced his heart as well, and it would soon turn to ice.”_

_“It was the glass in his eye and the glass in his heart that made him hate even little Gerda, who loved him with all her soul.”_

 

**Bagram Airfield Base, May, 2008**

Her first night on the base, MacKenzie did a quick internet search of “Will McAvoy”, the way she always did before writing him an email (Not that it mattered much, she hadn’t had the heart to take off the Google Alert she’d put on his name the day she became his EP).

_The Snow Queen kissed Kay again, and he forgot all about Gerda and everyone else at home. He decided he would follow her._

His ratings were tracking up. She hadn’t seen the show since leaving the States ( _Fuck cross network stories_ was a sentence that had very nearly appeared in an email to her boss had Jim not had the presence of mind to keep her away from her laptop when she was drunk) but the new EP, whoever he was, must be good. Will had always been adamant about what they would and wouldn’t cover, and MacKenzie wondered, frowning slightly, what her replacement could be doing to get more viewers without compromising quality that she hadn’t thought of.

Jim mumbled for her to go sleep from his bunk. In the dark of the room, her computer screen cast a harsh white glare over his soft features.

She saved the email she was writing as a draft and closed her laptop.

 

**Kabul, August 2008**

to: <Will McAvoy> wmackavoy@cnn.com

from: <MacKenzie McHale> mmchale@cnn.com

Hi Will,

I heard you moved back to ACN (I hope you’re still checking this email). Congratulations on the new job- I know you’ve always wanted to go back to working for Charlie.

You haven’t answered any of these so I’m not expecting a reply, I just wanted to let you know I’m changing units- starting next week I’ll be week 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines in case you were to try to contact me through the military. If you _do_ read this, please answer or call or do something- I saw the show on my last week off, it’s very different and I’m a little worried about you.

Congratulations again,

-MacKenzie

_It seemed the waves couldn’t answer the question of what had happened to Kay._

As the months ticked by, she began to lose hope. Her phone messages to Will stopped entirely, she switched exclusively to emails and even those started to dwindle, a rash attempt every now and again. She buried herself in her work, which remained stellar despite her worsening disposition.

_When Gerda realized her boat was drifting down the stream she tried to get back to shore, but it was too late._

Continued to spiral, lashing out at Jim and the other members of her crew (all of whom, for some reason, stayed).

Eventually the anger subsided, and she was left alone again with the crashing waves of sadness.

She wondered if there was something wrong with her, that it still hurt so much all these months later, like she had some terrible affliction that would leave her drowning forever in the sadness, unable to move or feel anything at all.

But she could turn on ACN and know that she was not the one with ice in her heart.

*

_On the banks of the stream she saw a house painted in blue and red, and outside the house stood two wooden soldiers, who presented arms to anyone who sailed past. Gerda thought they were real and called out to them._

Eventually it was her new normal, a sadness which became detached from any meaning. She didn’t forget about him, but it was easy to justify. He never emailed back, so there was not point in continuing to try. There was really no reason to watch his show now that they weren’t working for the same networks.  

She moved on, or tried to, at least, for a while. Befriended some of the Marines, but they cycled through tours and she cycled through units. She visited her parents on weeks off, when she had the chance. At Jim’s urging, she submitted an entry for the Peabodys.

She was neither happy nor unhappy, instead lulled into some kind of complacency, tricked herself into believing it was enough, because it was all she had. 

_With the old woman’s enchantments, Gerda forgot all about little Kay. She went out everyday to play in the flowers, and, plentiful though they were, she always thought that there was one missing, though she didn’t know which one._

 

**Kandahar, November 2009**

It took her a minute to realize why there were flowers everywhere. Holidays had always taken a minute for her, to figure out what was celebrated where from a childhood split by an ocean, but someone at the Kandahar airport had been handing out poppies to members of Operation Herrick.

“It’s Remembrance Day.” She told Jim, who just nodded and returned to his laptop. It shook her a little, that the year was ending so quickly, and she counted back the months on her fingers, trying to figure out exactly how long she’d been overseas.

“They make you sleep, right?” Jim said, looking a little more interested. “Poppies?”

“There’s offerings to the dead.” She replied, a little too quickly, a little too much like a dismissal. She was distracted, out of the corner of her eye she could see one of the Marines had Will on the television. “In _The Wizard of Oz,_ yeah.” She relented, softer this time. “The, um, the witch sends Dorothy into a field of poppies to try to trick her into sleeping forever. And, maybe in mythology? I’m not sure.” Cambridge seemed very far away in that moment.

“I meant in real life.” Jim said. “Opium. It’s where morphine comes from.”

“I know.”

“I’m just saying, its ironic considering-”

She didn't register the end of the sentence, distracted by the ACN screen. “Jim,” She said, pushing her laptop away to run over the Marines. The chyron under Will’s face read “APOLOGY”. 

“… and on behalf of myself and everyone at ACN, I would like to sincerely apologize to anyone angered or offended by remarks made on this program following the shooting at Fort Hood last week.”

“Figure out what he’s talking about, will you?” MacKenzie murmured to Jim.

“On it.” He pulled out his phone. She kept staring at the screen, but Will had already moved on to a segment called “StormWatch”.

“It’s on YouTube.” Jim said, offering her one of his earbuds and holding up the screen of his phone. (“In times like this-” Will on Jim’s phone screen was saying. “I think it’s worth remembering-”) The facts and figures he reeled off didn’t stick in Mac’s head, and she was unsure what network executive was making him apologize for pointing out not all Muslims are terrorists, but it brought several things to clarity- that this had been dangerous considering the size of his current audience, and that he had done it anyway, at the risk of losing viewers (the only demographic, so far as she could tell, was racists, but it was a start).

_When Gerda saw the painted rose, she immediately remembered all about Kay._

“He’s still got it.” Mac commented when it was over.

“You’re kidding, right?” Jim said. “He just apologized for denouncing _racism_.”

“Under duress.”

“Hmm?”

“He apologized under duress.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do.” She said, staring at his face on the television. “Believe me, he does not want to be there right now.”

 “Do you want to see if we can get someone on the record about it for our show?” Jim asked.  “I mean, its military news, I guess.

She wasn’t listening.

 “Mac?” He said, a little concerned.

“I think,” MacKenzie said slowly, eyes still fixed on the television. “I think that when I can, I should go home.”

_She asked if Kay could be dead after all this time, and the roses replied. “He isn’t dead.” the roses told her. “We have been down in the earth where the dead things are, and we have not seen him.”_

Watching Will’s face, she felt as if she were waking up.

 

**Garmsir, December 2009**

It snowed the day she found out Will had been moved to eight o’clock. This wasn’t trench warfare- they had Skype and satellite cell service and emails and the internet- but even so information didn’t reach them at the terminal velocity it did the majority of the American public. If it wasn’t critical, it was likely they were a few days behind. It was Jim that had showed her the article on his phone, Jim who didn’t know the whole story between them but knew enough to be angry about it.

_The crow explained that his princess had made up her mind to marry as soon as possible. The newspapers immediately put out an announcement that any presentable young man could try his luck for her hand in marriage. Soon, lines went all around the castle._

_“And Kay won the princess’ hand?” Gerda asked. “Of course he did.”_

“I guess his apology worked.” was Jim’s only comment.

MacKenzie wasn’t angry. She’d informed CNN that she and Jim weren’t renewing their contracts in March, had been vaguely searching for New York apartments and her emails to Will had returned.

If all of him was not yet lost, then maybe she could bring him back.

 

**Evanston, March 2010**

_“I must go to the palace. He will remember me.”_

MacKenzie knew that in stories, seemingly all stories, things came in threes. Three wise men, three little pigs, three witches, three Fates and three Graces. She didn’t fancy herself a heroine, but it seemed almost fitting she passed three tests to see him again.

Test number one was the panic attack when she saw the number of people in the audience, taken care of to the best of her ability in the lecture theatre’s bathroom (She imagined herself in one of the online fantasy world games Jim played on his laptop sometimes. “Potion administered! +15 Hit Points!”). That made her slightly late, and test number two was sweet talking the guard to let her in anyway (“Charm Power-up Used!”). Finally, there was sneaking in unnoticed, ducking down to look for a vacant seat, praying he wouldn’t see her (“Stealth Mode Activated”).

He was there.

_Her heart beat with fear and longing. She felt as though she was doing something wrong, yet she only wanted to make sure this was really Kay. Yes, it truly must be Kay, she thought, seeing his sparkling eyes and his long hair. She remembered exactly how he looked when he used to smile at her as they sat under the roses at home._

He was really there and it was really him.

When he said “the New York Jets” she lunged for her notepad, and tried to open it a little too quickly. The edge of the paper grazed her thumb, leaving a paper cut which began to bleed.

“I’m going to hold you to an answer on that one.” The moderator said.

She wrote in letters she hoped were large enough for him to read, carful to keep her thumb from soaking the edge of the paper, and held up the pad.

She could see the moment he spotted her, and deliberately flipped between the two pages.

When he turned to the moderator and replied sharply “It’s not.”, MacKenzie wondered if this could really be her second chance. It was narcissistic and presumptuous and about a hundred other things, but maybe, she thought, she could save him.

Maybe he was waiting to be saved. 

 

**Delaram, January 2010**

_“It seems to me there is someone on the stairs behind us.” Gerda said. Things brushed past, and from the shadows on the wall they seemed to be horses with spindly legs and waving manes. And there were shadows of huntsmen, ladies and gentlemen, on horseback. “Those are only dreams.” Said the crow._

MacKenzie felt inclined to leave out certain parts of the story. There was no way, for instance, she was recounting the section where the little robber girl slept with a knife pressed to Gerda’s neck, not while the angry red line on her abdomen still throbbed during the night, not while she still had nightmares about it, not while _he_ still had nightmares about it.

Over the years, Jim had become less and less like someone who needed her protection, she knew. They had both changed so much. Grown harder around the edges, more cautious, in some respects at least, but there was something unyielding about them now, something difficult to pin down in their eyes, some kind of physical tic that identified them both as people who had seen far too much.

MacKenzie was hoping unyielding was exactly what Will needed.

(“You could stay, you know.” She’d told Jim the day she’d decided to come home. “I can make calls.” He’d flat-out refused, told her he was following her and she hadn’t shown it, but her relief had been palpable).

_“Lie still.” The robber girl said. “Or I’ll stick this knife in your stomach.”_

**Washington, D.C., March 2010**

_“Coo, coo.” The pigeons said. “We have seen Kay in the Snow Queen’s sleigh.”_

On television the next night, he let McChrystal off the hook. She watched it happen from her apartment, too tired even to shout at the television. She instead curled up in front of her window, trying to forget about the sounds of exploding IEDs in the background of the interview, trying to forget the sound of them when they would explode over her head. The tears in her eyes blurred the landscape of Washington’s night until all that remained was the blinding white of the Capitol Building against the midnight blue sky.

 

**New York, April 2010**

_Little Kay is indeed with the Snow Queen, and everything there suits him fine. He thinks it’s the best place in all the world, but that’s because he has a splinter of glass in his heart. Unless it can be gotten out, he will never be human again, and the Snow Queen will hold him in her power._

It’s possible she had been wrong. He’d indulged her, for an hour on a Friday night when nobody would be watching, but almost six months after MacKenzie decided to go home, she has to confront the idea that maybe Will doesn’t want to be saved, that she’s only invented the signs, applied a decoder ring to utterly innocuous situations. She felt like the woman Will had reported on during Pop Watch last week, the one who’d claimed to have found Elvis in a potato chip.   

It had been nothing but a stupid fantasy. She wasn’t Gerda, she knew that. She hadn’t traveled the wide world to save him, she’d done it to escape him. She couldn’t be Gerda, not when she’d been the one to put ice in his heart in the first place.

*

_Little Kay was blue, yes, almost black, with cold. But he did not feel it._

_She recognized him at once and went to throw her arms around him. She held him close and said his name. But he sat still, and stiff, and cold._

Fuck it, Mac decided on the beginning of her second day (a philosophy that had at this point guided a frighteningly large percentage of her life decisions). One more day. She’d give Will one more day, and then she would move on from him. There was still Jim, she could still coach up the new girl, Maggie, and Don needed to be reminded of how to do this well. Maybe the goal needed to change, so she went in to day number two with News Night 2.0 and _I,I,I,A_ and if Will didn’t like it, tough, because she had final approval of what went on the air.

Or so she thought.

The Palin SOT had blindsided her, he could screw around with her however much he liked in private, but she wasn’t going to let him mess with what she was trying to do.

“By Monday I want to know, are you in or are you out?”

*

She followed the team to Hang Chew’s, still trying to get a feel for who everyone was. Who she might be able to promote up fast, who had promise, who would leave in six months for a bigger salary.

She showed up, as she always did,  with the best of intentions, but ended up slinking off into a corner by herself (usually Jim’s cue to make her go home, but he looked to be in some kind of argument with Maggie).

Then Neal passed her his phone.

“I’m in.”

“What?”

“I’m in. I’ll see you on Monday.”

_Gerda shed hot tears, and they melted the ice in his heart and burned away the splinter of glass in it._

It had worked. Or it was working.

After three years of constantly moving, she finally felt like she was going somewhere.

On Monday he sent flowers to her office, a card with an apology and, she hoped, a new beginning.

 

**Delaram, January 2010**

_Kay and Gerda held each other by the hand. And it was summer, warm, glorious, summer._

“I don’t think we’re there yet.” Jim mumbled, barely awake. “The happy ending.”

MacKenzie paused. “The story’s not over yet.”

 

**New York, 1984**

The story was over. The book was placed back on the shelf. MacKenzie waited until her father had left the room, them jumped down from her bed, pulling the volume out from its place between on her sister’s bookcase, wedged between Winnie-The-Pooh and Mallory Towers. She returned to bed, pulling the book under the covers with her to sleep. Her sister claimed to be too old for bedtime stories, so nobody would look at the bookcase before morning.

Things are always more beautiful when you cannot have them, and she’d never been good at letting things go.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> In case you're wondering, I took some artistic liscence with the original fairy tale- re-structured a sentence or two for concision, moved one or two things around.  
> I'm trying to build up to writing longer things, the word count on some of the stories in this fandom amazes me. I don't know how you guys do it! (Also if anyone here beta reads, please let me know!)
> 
> Have a lovely day :)


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